The Impact of Publicly Provided Early Childhood Education Programs on District‐Level Test Scores

Abstract

While the existing literature largely finds that standardized test scores are positively associated with participation in pre‐kindergarten programs at the student level, there is little research on the policy effect of publicly providing these programs to entire school districts. We attempt to partially fill this void by examining the effect that publicly provided pre‐kindergarten and full‐day kindergarten programs have on fourth grade student achievement in math and reading at the district level. The models utilize panel data from districts in Wisconsin along with fixed effects estimations. We find that once time‐invariant unobserved heterogeneity of a district is accounted for, preschool programs have small but significant impacts on a cohort's future math scores, particularly in less‐educated communities. Additionally, there is no evidence that preschool or full‐day kindergarten has an impact on future reading scores at the district level.

JEL Classification: I20, I28